The Euahlayi Tribe

While the United States battled the Communists of North Vietnam in the 1960s and '70s, the neighbouring country of Cambodia was attacked from within by dictator Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge imprisoned, enslaved, and murdered the educated and intellectual members of the population, resulting in the harrowing "killing fields"–rice paddies where the harvest yielded nothing but millions of skulls.

Young Sichan Siv–a target since he was a university graduate–was told by his mother to run and "never give up hope!" Captured and put to work in a slave labor camp, Siv knew it was only a matter of time before he would be worked to death–or killed. With a daring escape from a logging truck and a desperate run for freedom through the jungle, including falling into a dreaded pungi pit, Siv finally came upon a colorfully dressed farmer who said, "Welcome to Thailand."

He spent months teaching English in a refugee camp in Thailand while regaining his strength, eventually Siv was allowed entry into the United States. Upon his arrival in the U.S., Siv kept striving. Eventually rising to become a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Siv returned with great trepidation to the killing fields of Cambodia in 1992 as a senior representative of the U.S. government. It was an emotionally overwhelming visit.

Sok Samuth approaches the bed and takes down the sheets. It’s very sad what we see. The girl is inhumanly thin and her skin is peeling off. He pulls the sheet up over the girl’s body again and the mother keeps up her monotone plea for Buddha while the little girl follows me, eye to eye. She wants me to make her feel better.
I’m thinking, no, not this one. The whole thing was about this one. It was always about this one.
"What is it?" he asks me.
"I don’t know. Is there a fever?"
"No, pas de fièvre." She is cool to the tough and there isn’t any shivering, no chills. …All my ream could tell me was that she’d been sick for a few weeks and that her appetite was poor for a week and that she became worse …

Strictly off limits to the public, Plum Island is home to virginal beaches, cliffs, forests, ponds -- and the deadliest germs that have ever roamed the planet. Lab 257 blows the lid off the stunning true nature and checkered history of Plum Island. It shows that the seemingly bucolic island in the shadow of New York City is a ticking biological time bomb that none of us can safely ignore.

Based on declassified government documents, in-depth interviews, and access to Plum Island itself, this is an eye-opening, suspenseful account of a federal government germ laboratory gone terribly wrong. For the first time, Lab 257 takes you deep inside this secret world and presents startling revelations on virus outbreaks, biological meltdowns, infected workers, the periodic flushing of contaminated raw sewage into area waters, and the insidious connections between Plum Island, Lyme disease, and the deadly West Nile virus. The book also probes what's in store for Plum Island's new owner, the Department of Homeland Security, in this age of bioterrorism.

Lab 257 is a call to action for those concerned with protecting present and future generations from preventable biological catastrophes.

An intensely controversial scrutiny of American democracy’s fundamental tension between the competing imperatives of security and openness.